Hannukah sermon on Justice 2015
How do we hold on to hope in hopeless times? Here we are in the second Sunday of Advent, the first night of Hannukah, weeks away from the celebration of the Winter solstice, and the world seems to have gone mad. There are random acts of terror, both by radical Islamists and homegrown white American men, there is no end in sight to the number of guns that are circulating in this country. People are being shot at office parties, at restaurants, at Planned Parenthood, at peaceful protests.
Where we are heading? Some nights the picture looks pretty bleak, and pretty hopeless. Praying for peace is never a bad idea, but these days make clear that is not nearly enough.
In one of her essays in the collection, Blessing the World, former President of Starr King Seminary, Rev Dr Rebecca Ann Parker asks: “How do we live in the world? What is our religious task? She answers as follows:
The traditional response of religious liberalism is to place our hope in the future. Our apocalyptic myth imagines that the present world will come to an end and a new age will dawn. The liberal apocalyptic imagination skips the violent parts. It sees change coming through an evolutionary process—the gradual dismantling of evil empires and the eventual unfolding of life into greater forms of beauty and justice.” Ms Parker pauses and then states: “We need to let go of this religious myth.”
She advises that we need to more honestly face the conditions of devastation that we are in the midst of, here and now… She advises us to relinquish our innocence and see the world as it is: to notice the breakdown, sorrow and legacies of injustice that characterize our current world order. From this place of honesty, we must discover how we can live among the ruins.” (Blessing the World, p 21)
The New York Times offered a place of honesty when it asked readers to send in their thoughts and feelings about living in a time of mass shootings. Here are two individuals’ answers to how they are living among the ruins.
Mariyam, 26, from Davis, Calif., said she worried that someone would shoot her because she wears a hijab, or Islamic head scarf.
“I think about shootings almost daily, in fear that one day I might be the victim of an armed Islamophobe or that a shooter may target the mosques attended by my friends and family in retaliation for some atrocity committed in the name of my religion,” she wrote. “I find myself constantly looking over shoulder and am even nervous if another driver on the road rides too close. There is a hardly a moment when I am not anxious about senseless violence.”
Tara, 41, from Oregon, said she survived a shooting at the high school where she works. Since then, she has thought about the potential for another incident “almost daily.”
“I still startle every time I hear a loud bang,” she wrote. “I unconsciously move quickly away from young men in trench coats, or people with backpacks who seem nervous. I have to resist the urge to race to my children’s school and yank them out of class every time I hear another mass shooting has happened. I am terrified.”
“When I hear people say ‘That kind of thing just doesn’t happen here’, I get angry,” she wrote. “Of course it does – it IS happening.” (I Think About It Daily’: Life in a Time of Mass Shootings, By Liam Stack, NYT 12/3/15)
These are just two of over 5000 responses sent to the paper.
My brother, who is strong and tall and walks through the world with confidence admitted that while stuck in gridlocked traffic in Boston the other day, he locked all his doors. He has never done this before. I have long been claustraphobic, but lately, I avoid any crowded area, in or outside. I left the movie theater the other week, and actually had the thought, “movie was good, and no one had a gun in the theater,
How do you hold on to hope in hopeless times? We must start with where we are. An honest look at what human beings are capable of doing, of what human beings are doing to each other, is not always jolly. But we must remain steadfast in our pursuit of the truth.
The search for truth tells us that evil is not something that gathers in one place and one people. Evil runs through every human heart. It differs in degrees of course, but no is exempt from hard or harsh feelings. In a collection called Children’s Letters to God, one child writes, “Dear God, I don’t know how you can like everyone! I can’t even get along with my sister.”
Indeed.
One way to regain some hope in times like these, is to concentrate on one small thing and tend to it carefully. Whether it is your apartment or your kid’s school, this church or some other organization you are passionate about, work to make it as excellent as it can be. The idea to think globally but act locally, has never seemed so timely.
Another way to live with hope is to forget about outcomes. Yes, we can work towards justice, we can work towards peace, we can try to create more love in this world. But we must be satisfied with the work itself, and not the outcome.
When UUSR member Ann Sheinwald, helped to gain public access to the waterfront for all Rockport residents, she was probably not spending too much time dwelling on the future benefits of her work. She was too busy working: Going to meetings, writing letters, going to meetings, writing some more letters. Justice work is slow and not steady. But yesterday, Jesse and I were the happy recipients of her and others’ efforts.
When I was doing my Chaplaincy training, my supervisor was fond of saying that my 20 minute visits could only plant seeds; I was never going to see the harvest.
Whether it is the people at the Paris Climate Change talks, the Black Lives Matter and Standing up for Racial Justice members: the members of this congregation meeting weekly to discuss Dominant Culture privilege, none of us can know how our actions will affect people in the future, but we work for justice anyway.
Thomas Merton wrote: Do not depend on the hope of results… You may have to face the fact that your work will be apparently worthless and even achieve no result at all, if not perhaps results opposite to what you expect. As you get used to this idea, you start more and more to concentrate not on the results, but on the value, the rightness, the truth of the work itself… You gradually struggle less and less for an idea and more and more for specific people… In the end, it is the reality of personal relationships that saves everything.
Do not depend on the hope of results. What a message for us, on this second Sunday of Advent, first night of Hannukah, weeks away from the celebration of the winter solstice! Do not depend on the hope of results but concentrate on personal relationships. In the end, it is relationships that save us. When we are feeling hopeless, someone who loves us can hold the hope for us.
One of the New York Times readers responded to the query about mass shootings by writing the following:
Kieran, 33, from Quincy, Mass.,
“I am aware of the possibility [of mass shootings] but recognize it as remote enough that any thoughts or preparation for such an attack would be irrational and distract me from real threats to my immediate existence, like traffic accidents, or my own risky behaviors like drinking too much, smoking, or eating unhealthy.”
“I try to keep my fears and anxieties in check and make sure I focus on actively improving my life instead of worrying about unseen threats that I can’t control,” he continued. “I see this approach to life as me doing my part to defeat terror – which is an emotion, not an organization.”
I appreciate Kieran’s attitude about the fruitlessness of worrying about unseen threats he cannot control. I just hope that his focus on improving his life includes other people.
Our faith tells us that we are important, but then, so is everyone. Our faith tells us that we are simply a part of the interdependent web of all creation. Let us look at this creation with clear and honest eyes. Let us do our part for our tiny part of the creation. Let us hold on to hope for one another-even as we may feel hopeless ourselves.
It is only the relationships that matter in the end. We will be saved by our loved ones, and we will, in turn, have an opportunity to save someone else.
May it be so, now and always.